Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

We still have time to mess this up!

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Sunday Evening Open Thread: Tax the Billionaires, for They Are Hot Garbage

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Tax the Billionaires, for They Are Hot Garbage

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

I don’t think Willard Romney is even a billionaire — just a hundred-millionaire carrying water for his (fiscal) betters:

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  3. 3.

    Leto

    Vilos Cohaagen lied to you, son.

    Exactly what I thought, and I laughed waaaay too hard at this one.

  12. 12.

    Leto

    @Peale: like burns said, it’s a cult. Idk, maybe he’ll pull a Jimbo Jones and fly all his cult members to Mars… not free of course. Indentured servitude for 60-70 years, but you know… Mars!

  16. 16.

    smith

    Hillary got it wrong — the real deplorables are our oligarchs. They know that by propping up fascists in the GQP they will hasten both the end of a democratic form of government here and the end of the earth’s ability to support human life everywhere. Yet they do it anyway. For what? So they won’t have to pay taxes. In other words, to pile more money on top of a massive stack of money that for the most part has already lost any value to them. The money they acquire by not paying taxes is literally worthless: Any extra dollar they accrue will not and cannot make any substantive difference in their lives or the lives of their children or their grandchildren, that’s how much money they already have. It is no more than Monopoly money. They are appallingly, indescribably bad people.

  19. 19.

    JoyceH

    WHAT is with Youngkin and those zip-up fleece vests? He looks like he works at a grocery store.

  20. 20.

    geg6

    DougJ would be the one and only reason to get onto Twitter.  I wish we’d have more of his wit here because I won’t partake in Twitter.  But if I ever do, he’ll be why.

  21. 21.

    Ten Bears

    Uhhmmm … Mars has 1/6th Earth gravity, no running, no atmosphere, and is about a hundred degrees (F) below zero on a warm day. I’d venture the light of consciousness would dim rather quickly.

    You first Elon, put your (mostly other people’s) money where your mouth is …

  23. 23.

    JPL

    @geg6: you control what you see on twitter.  You can follow just a few feeds that you want.   The one thing you have to remember is never, ever comment.  Reading comments are useless also.   It’s almost like don’t feed the gremlins after midnight.   just don’t

  26. 26.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    If the billionaires took all their money out of the stock market and used it to buy art, we’d be living in renaissance Florence.  Do these people have any idea how many people would rather be craftsmen and artists than crunching numbers on computers all day?

    Except that of course then all the artists would show up the rich.

    I’ve been wondering why the wealth of our age seems to show up only in bitcoin and index funds.  I’m thinking that with the Internet, if it were in anything else, the proles would be able to show up the elite.  So nothing anyone actually makes can be considered valuable, only real estate in certain markets and stocks of your friends’ companies.  That way, nobody really rich looks untalented, even though certain tech fools still manage to do so.

  27. 27.

    DanielsBob

    Hey, let’s go trash another planet–soon as we figure out how to breathe and eat there.

    Is it time to eat the rich yet?

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    My plan is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness

    What the shit does this even mean?

    Oh fuck it, and fuck Musk.

  32. 32.

    Anyway

    Halloween OT – hiding upstairs as I ran out of candy!! I bought 2 bags of 100 pieces — Didn’t want to get too much and be stuck with leftover candy.

    Steady stream of kids — my street is popular, I guess.

  37. 37.

    Captain C

    @mrmoshpotato: We’ll know he’s serious when he successfully sets up a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica or, say, the Gobi Desert, either of which would be much easier than putting one on Mars or even the moon.

  38. 38.

    Aziz, light!

    @Ten Bears: Actually Mars temps reach 70F near the equator, and NASA has recorded a high of 86. Gravity is 0.38 of Earth, not one sixth as on the Moon. That said, I welcome Elon’s relocation to a world with no oxygen and no protection from cosmic radiation. That he imagines it to be a future home for humanity is the stupidest idea on Earth.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop:

    Do these people have any idea how many people would rather be craftsmen and artists than crunching numbers on computers all day? 

    This is absolutely right. But we subsist on low-quality shit, like particle board furniture and plastic dishes, because we are too tired and busy doing other meaningless shit.

    The MAGA people want to return to being a manufacturing economy. It will never happen for a million reasons. But the allure of it was that you could make a pretty good wage with not a whole lot of education. I would like to see the next great economic shift to move us to a creative economy, in which, unlike the manufacturing economy, someone might get a lot of education or training in their creative endeavor. But then get out of these fucken cheap, shitty consumptive patterns that we are in and instead make the world’s best cultural products and durable goods.

  40. 40.

    Chetan Murthy

    More Elon moral imbecility. The imbecile conflates “prevent these people from dying this year” into “solve world hunger”.  Moral imbecile.

    Elon: finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-wants-proof-6-164343999.html

    Musk was responding to comments by David Beasley, director of the UN’s World Food Programme, who repeated a call last week following an earlier tweet this month asking billionaires like Musk to “step up now, on a one-time basis.”

    Beasley specifically called for action from Musk and Amazon.com Inc. co-founder Jeff Bezos, the two men atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Just $6 billion could keep 42 million people from dying, Beasley said.

    If the World Food Programme, using transparent and open accounting, “can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post.

    Beasley: cbsnews.com/news/starvation-deaths-billionaires-could-help-fix-it-david-beasley/

    Millions of people in 43 countries are at risk of famine, the most extreme form of hunger that can result in death, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. And the director of the program says all it would take to prevent that from happening is a small fraction of U.S. billionaires’ net worth.

    David Beasley, director of the World Food Programme, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Tuesday that a “one-time” donation from the top 400 billionaires in the U.S. could help save the lives of 42 million people this year. 

    “The governments are tapped out. This is why and this is when … the billionaires need to step up now on a one-time basis, $6 billion to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them,” Beasley said. “It’s not complicated.”

  41. 41.

    John S.

    Elon Musk and his fanboys must not pay very close attention to the sci-fi they claim to love so much:

    The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

    — Jean-Luc Picard

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Captain C:

    a self-sustaining colony in Antarctica or, say, the Gobi Desert

    A fully-underground colony, where nobody spends appreciable time aboveground.  B/c that’s what a Mars colony will be: fully underground.

  47. 47.

    Peale

    @Leto: I think this ends with Elon living on a floor of the Bellagio, refusing to cut his finger nails. Except when that’s revealed, the press swoons that “ol’ Elon ‘s still got his edge.”

  49. 49.

    Geminid

    I’ve read that some of the tax credits in the bills that will (fingers crossed) pass Tueday will be directed towards  unionized car manufacturers. That may be part of why hit-dog Musk is yelping. I guess we’ll have to wait until the bills pass to see if this is so.

    I am all for extracting revenue from top “earners” like Musk. But generally speaking, I think the best way to reduce income inequality is to promote a thriving working class. Supporting unionization through government policy and as individuals is a powerful way to do this. If the Teamsters can succeed in unionizing Amazon, that and the resulting effect on other workplaces will do as much or more to reduce income equality as a good wealth tax. And we can have both.

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    I thought I saw a tweet last week that said, in effect, “billionaires need to understand that the ‘choice’ being put to them isn’t their current low tax rates or paying a few percent more…it’s paying a few percent more, or having their wealth confiscated and their heads put on pikes”

    No wait, that was me.  That’s what I’m always saying to myself.  >(

  52. 52.

    zhena gogolia

    @smith: Yeah. Every time I scream about some NYT story, my husband just says, “They really don’t want to pay those taxes.”

  55. 55.

    Professor Bigfoot

    Musk’s Mars dream is idiocy.

    BUT— what SpaceX are doing with the Starship program is building something far more important— access to low earth orbit.

    Microgravity manufacturing, and asteroid mining suddenly become far more cost effective.

    It’s really brilliant… almost worth having to listen to that stupid bastard.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    If you’d worked for 50 years, 40 hours a week, earning a million dollars an hour and never spending anything, you’d have less than a third of what Musk has.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    Mitt Romney says if we raise taxes on billionaires, they will pull all their money out of the stock market and buy paintings.

    What a bunch of dopes. Let them try. Then confiscate the paintings.

    BTW, the uber wealthy and wannabees have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. I recently heard a radio commercial offering some scheme where rich people could buy fractional shares of expensive paintings. This sounded nuttier than bitcoin.

    I don’t hate the rich or see a need to be excessively punitive. But I am tired of their whiny bullshit.

    The fact is that the Trump tax cuts were too generous to business and to upper income individuals. And people and business made big money during and after the pandemic. They are doing well despite supply chain issues. We can raise taxes to pay for needed programs without hurting the economy.

  62. 62.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    “Your tax reform won’t work because I and all my rich friends will just launder our money to avoid it being spent on social programs.”

    That’s still fine because it gets the money out of a bank account and circulating again.

  64. 64.

    VOR

    I remember in 2012 Romney published his taxes. I was paying a higher rate than he was and I didn’t even have a car elevator.

  65. 65.

    Dan B

    @smith: YUvalde Noah Harrari interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 minutes says this generation will be the last homo sapiens, that machine enhanced humans and AI will be captured by billionaires and unavailable to much of humanity.  I believe famine, drought, and flood will cause enormous chaos and those robots won’t make themselves.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator:

    We can raise taxes to pay for needed programs without hurting while maximizing growth in the economy.

    FIFY.

    Mike Kimel at BusinessInsider:

    Long story made very short, Diamond and Saez jump through a lot of hoops and find that the optimal top marginal income tax rate (all in, that is, including federal, state and local), which they define as maximizing social welfare, is about 73%.

    Now, long time readers may recall I’ve been doing this sort of analysis for years, though of course I’ve been looking at tax rates that maximize real GDP growth. Simply put, you cannot maximize long run social welfare if you aren’t maximizing economic growth.

    […]

    I mention all this to note that no matter what I throw into the equation, I find that the top marginal tax rate that maximizes economic growth is somewhere around 65%. Of course, I’ve focused only on federal tax rates… add in state and local it comes pretty close to what Diamond and Saez have found.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    geg6

    @JPL:

    Thanks but I really am aware of all that but am not interested in following anyone on Twitter.  I am barely on FB these days and only for close family and friends, who are all, in any case, non-insane and reliably liberal Dems.  I’ve also cut back my commenting here, though I am lurking all the time.  Really trying to limit social media in my life and, by extension, my Internet cruising, period.  I am much happier when I do, I find.  Too much depressing stuff (especially the media themselves) and I just need a break.

  68. 68.

    burnspbesq

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    almost worth having to listen to that stupid bastard.

    Tell it to the last remaining breeding population of ocelots in the USA, whose habitat is being despoiled by SpaceX.

  69. 69.

    burnspbesq

    @Brachiator:

    they will pull all their money out of the stock market and buy paintings.

    Go for it, y’all. Recognize all of those trillions in gains and pay 20 percent to the Feds, plus state.

  71. 71.

    Ruckus

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I worked time and a half overtime a lot over that 50 yrs, does that count?

     

    I’m assuming not because well, I don’t have what he likely spent on food in the last month.

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    @burnspbesq: Sounds like a plan.

    Seriously, I don’t think anyone is demanding that Musk sell his entire 23% stake in Tesla.   But clearly something is wrong when his wealth can go up $25B+ in a day and he can pay little or no income tax…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Aziz, light!:

    That he imagines it to be a future home for humanity is the stupidest idea on Earth.

    This is a depressingly common take on the left for whatever reason. Mars can be terraformed. Perhaps the technology to do this won’t be available for hundreds or thousands of years but it’s theoretically possible. Besides, humanity needs to spread out beyond Earth if it hopes to survive for as long as possible

  75. 75.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Bill Gates celebrated his 66th birthday with Jeff Bezos at an intimate party in a secluded Turkish cove, reports say
    Guests were helicoptered from Bill Gates’s megayacht, Lana, to the secluded and picturesque cove. He is currently renting the yacht for 1.8 million euros per week, according to reports.

    The yacht has a gym, jacuzzi, beach club, and swimming pool

  77. 77.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI, the end of Biden’s press conference in Rome, Italy. WH.gov:

    […]

    I thank you all very, very much for your patience. Thank you. Thank you.

    Q Mr. President, do you have commitments from Sinema and Manchin? Sir, do you have commitments from Sinema and Manchin? Just a “thumbs up.”

    (The President gives a “thumbs up” as he departs.)

    Q Thumbs up!

    ?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Tony Gerace

    Arrogant white guy who grew up under apartheid in South Africa.  Is it too late to send him back there?

  79. 79.

    Urban Suburbanite

    I briefly got sucked into a rabbit hole today reading up on UC Santa Barbara’s blowup involving a proposed dorm that makes Soviet apartment buildings look light and welcoming, and the weird old rich dude demanding this horrible thing while dangling a 200 million donation. Does this (sort of) living caricature of capitalism have any expertise in architecture? Of course not. He made a lot of money under Warren Buffett, so he must be an expert.

    And one of the architects working on this project quit, saying it was an offense as a human being and parent.

  81. 81.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Mittens has been laundering his money for years, that’s why he wouldn’t release his tax returns.

  82. 82.

    lowtechcyclist

    Mitt Romney says if we raise taxes on billionaires, they will pull all their money out of the stock market and buy paintings.

    Yeah, like that’s gonna work. First of all, if they pull their money out of the stock market, that’s selling stocks, IOW realized capital gains, taxable under current law.

    Second, suppose you want to convert a billion dollars into paintings. There aren’t that many paintings that anyone would pay tens, let alone hundreds of millions of dollars for. So Billionaire 1 has to buy, say, 20 paintings at $50M each.

    Third, whoever’s selling them has a realized, taxable capital gain!

    Fourth, by the time you get to the third or fourth billionaire, you’ve pretty much burned through the supply of paintings that anyone would pay eight figures for. This strategy’s gonna go only so far.

    Fifth, and if they deal with that by buying them from each other, once again, realized, taxable capital gains!

    Next stop for billionaire money: nonfungible tokens, the “we’ll do any crazy shit with our money to keep it away from the taxman” stage, which would of course destroy whatever remaining claim they have that their wealth somehow benefits society as a whole.

  83. 83.

    Matt

    TBH Musk et al don’t even need to go to Mars to save the world – all they need is a spaceship carrying the 500 richest people and an airlock door…

Comments are closed.